Aspen couple donates $1 million to Colorado Mountain College

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Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, announced Monday the first $1 million pledge to the Isaacson School for New Media at Colorado Mountain College.

The donation is from Aspen residents John and Jessica Fullerton, who previously created the Isaacson School’s first full-ride scholarships for out-of-state students to draw them to the digital journalism, marketing, media production, graphic design and photography programs offered at the school.

“Jessica and I are pleased to make this leadership gift to the Isaacson School,” John Fullerton said in a statement.

“This program is assisting local students to enter this exciting new career field, and we believe it will also attract students from across the county to our region and will help increase the profile of new media in the Roaring Fork Valley.”

The announcement was made during the biannual meeting of the Colorado Mountain College board of overseers, a volunteer board of advisers to the college’s president.

“In the same way that community members on our campus advisory boards offer advice and perspective to their local campus vice president, the board of overseers offers valuable advice to the college president and is a source of key strategic connections,” said Carrie Besnette Hauser, who joined CMC as its president and CEO in December. “I look forward to working with this thoughtful group of supporters, whose perspective will help us in our aspiration to become the most innovative, inclusive and student-centered college in the nation.”

The board of overseers was founded by Jim Calaway, a Carbondale philanthropist, longtime supporter of CMC and lifetime trustee of the Aspen Institute. Recently named to the board of overseers is Ann Korologos. Korologos is the former U.S. secretary of labor and undersecretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, and she currently is the owner of the Ann Korologos Gallery in Aspen, chairman emeritus of the board of trustees of the Aspen Institute and the RAND Corp., and chairman of the board of directors for the Anderson Ranch Arts Center.